Thoughts on PMI Global Conference 2016

By Louise Worsley, a non-US attendee

The Project Management Institute Global Congress in North America is big!

PMI Global Conference 2016 Nearly 3,000 attendees from 67 countries representing some 1,368 organisations.

Just to give you a feel – the European equivalent PMI Congress in Barcelona attracted some 100’s of attendees. And at other related events; the International Institute of Business Analysts had 1,400 attendees at their global conference in Las Vegas (2015,) while the Association for Change Management Professional achieved just 1,100 attendees at their 2016 global conference in Dallas, Texas.

The brief initial survey, conducted via the excellent conference PMI App, suggests that attendees valued the learning from the sessions and the networking almost equally. In speaking with delegates, I found that a big incentive for attendance was to get PMI PDU points quickly and efficiently. All delegate attendance in sessions was recorded, and within weeks of the congress, it was added to attendees PDU records.

Picking the ‘good’ sessions is important

Over 100 sessions were available over the three days, divided into the three streams of ‘leadership’, ‘technical’ and ‘strategic and business management’. Given the varying length of the sessions (ranging from 1 hours to 1.5 hours) and the scheduling approach, the maximum number of session you could attend over the three days was about 9, plus the three keynote sessions. Attending the ‘good‘ sessions was thus pretty important, but as I heard some delegates comment – the choice process was a ‘bit hit and miss’. Popular sessions filled up quickly and places in the room were limited. By the second day, wise delegates had adopted the habit of simply getting to their preferred sessions very early.

Agile and soft skills attract audiences

Although the actual numbers and overall feedback have not been released yet, my feeling is that the big attractions were the Agile sessions (10 sessions) and the streams in leadership around communications and the soft skills. Sessions like Sherri Thomas, speaking on “Career Stories for Project Managers” inspired comments on Twitter (#PMIcongress) with her statement:

“Make connections with those who inspire you, teach you new things, or promote your ideas.”

Lessons and language from the keynotes

Perhaps the most discussed sessions were the keynotes. Not surprisingly given the San Diego venue (the home of the USS Midway and Top Gun) there was a military theme to the first session, with the ‘Afterburner’ consultancy team, made up largely of ex-military aviators. This was an upbeat and inspiring discussion of project management using a military flying metaphor, and had some great linguistic take-aways.

Task saturation leads to mistakes
Project managers need a bias towards action
Don’t wait for the perfect
We’re drowning in data but starving for information

For me, the highlight of the conference was the keynote presentation by the Canadian, Sue Gardner – a former executive at Wikimedia; and named one of the most powerful women by Forbes. Her statement:

“Good project managers don’t expect other people to adapt to them.” clearly caught the attention of a number of Twitter users.

She argued that disruptive business models such as Itunes, Uber, Airbnb, Amazon, Bitcoin have changed the ways we listen, ride, stay, buy and pay. As she puts it “software is eating the world” and IT is increasingly moving from a staff function to a line function, where it directly contributes to the strategic value of the business.

Following this, she poses her challenge: “How can large organisations that are trapped between the ‘sunrise stages’ and ‘sunset stages’ transform themselves to provide new disruptive business model innovation?”

Thinking of attending the next Congress?

The 2017 PMI Global Congress is in Chicago. Not quite such a glamorous venue as San Diego, and I suspect this may affect the numbers attending.

Interestingly, this will now be known as the PMI Global Congress (dropping the title North America) which does beg the question – are the European global congress being abandoned, or are they no longer ‘global’?

I won’t attend next year. I think one global Congress every 3-5 years is probably enough. Also, I find that hearing local stories and meeting local contacts is possibly more valuable, and hence I would prioritise the South Africa and Southern hemisphere conference in Australia and New Zealand.

Should you be thinking of attending the Congress in Chicago, here are my suggestions:

Research the speakers and sessions well beforehand. Of the five sessions I managed to attend (I was also speaking at the event) only two of them were really valuable. I didn’t pick the right sessions. Partly this was because I just didn’t know the names. Sherri Thomas, for example, is clearly well known in America for her book “Bounce back” and articles in the Huffington Post. If I had found this out before hand…
Make connections before the Congress and seek them out once there. The PMI App provides the names of all the attendee at the Congress, but in most cases, this does not include the company and nationality information. I was particularly interested in seeking out attendees from the African continent and certain industries. Bar peering at 3000 name badges – this proved very difficult to achieve.
Be prepared to use the conference backchat on both Twitter and the PMI App – this had some really interesting additional information and potentially provides a way to make connections.

And finally, if Chicago is just too far, don’t forget the next PMSA National Conference in Johannesburg, 9-12^th November. I will be there launching my book “Stakeholder-led project management: Changing the way we manage projects” and will be happy to share more experiences from the PMI Congress.

October 24, 2016December 22, 2018 Linky

How to Structure and Build a Project Team

By Linky van der Merwe

New project managers will find it challenging to organize, manage and lead a project team. The project team consists of people with assigned roles and responsibilities for completing the project. Project team members have varied skill sets and they may be assigned full or part-time. Team members may be on-site, or co-located as it’s called, or remote in which case the project manager needs to know how to deal with a virtual team.

It’s key for project team members to be involved in decision making and project planning as that will add their expertise to the process and strengthen their commitment to the project.

Project Roles

The various roles in a team will depend on the nature of a project. Normally there will be core team involved through-out a project, but the team structure will change at each stage to meet the evolving nature of a project. Roles may include examples like Business Analysts, Designers, Developers, Application Specialists (IT context), Testers and more.

For example, you may have a high-powered team to define the business solution, followed by a broader team, including virtual team members, to deliver it, then a smaller operational team to operate it.

Team Structure

Quite often, especially on complex projects, there are different work-streams or sub-projects happening in parallel. For example, on a new website project (or replacement of an existing), a website designer might be working with business managers and network specialists to create a storefront, another website designer is working with different business managers and developers on an intranet application to present management information on sales. This is where you end up with a project team as a matrix where various resource types need to work together to share knowledge and to create a consistent solution. Each of the sub-teams will need a leader and team members need to understand their individual roles.

When you structure the team consider the importance of generating collaboration, knowledge sharing and skills transfer. In the example below, the team would have a mix of people so that all the necessary skills, knowledge and understanding are collectively within that team, subject to any further specialised support that is needed.

Source: www.epmbook.com

Team Build

The team development is equally important. This is the process of improving competencies, team member interaction and the overall team environment to enhance project performance.

The team needs to be organized in order to maximize the team effectiveness. The project manager will foster good work relationships and motivate team members to complete quality work on time.

It’s good to be aware of the team development model, called the Tuckman ladder, which includes five stages of development that teams may go through:

Forming: team meets and learns about the project and their formal roles and responsibilities
Storming: team begins to address project work, technical decisions and need to be collaborative and open to different ideas; else the environment become counterproductive
Norming: team members begin to work together and learn to trust each other
Performing: team is a well-organised unit who work through issues smoothly
Adjourning: team completes the work and moves on from the project

Barriers to effective team development

Many barriers can be in the way of effective team development. For example, if team members have disjointed priorities, it may cause conflict within the team. Communication gaps originate if a project team doesn’t stay aligned, or there could be misunderstandings. Lastly, a team member may show a lack of commitment to a project especially if the person is working on several projects at the same time or is over-allocated in terms of project and operational responsibilities.

You will find that each project team’s dynamics are different. As long as you lead the team to a place of synergy where the combined effect is more than the individual contributions.

For more on Virtual Teams, read the article series:

Virtual Teams – 6 Lessons for success

Working with Virtual Teams – Useful Tools

Working with Virtual Teams – Techniques for maximum efficiency

Working with Virtual Teams – Critical Success Factors

Virtual Teams Communication challenges:

Communication challenges for Virtual Project Teams Part 1

Communication challenges for Virtual Project Teams Part 2

Please subscribe to Virtual Project Consulting not to miss future articles!

October 17, 2016February 14, 2022 Linky

Project Management: Harnessing the Power of Innovation

The speed of change is increasing exponentially. Organisations struggle to determine which change is applicable and how to manage it to their benefit. There’s a call for creativity and a shift in culture which will enable leaders and employees to optimise change. Many see “innovation” as the solution.

INNOVATION is a Discipline

According to forbes.com, innovation needs to be seen as a discipline – learning to use the right methods, tools and approaches at the right times. In other words: learning to harness innovation.

Creativity is about individuals coming up with ideas. Innovation is about “bringing ideas to life.” For example, we use creativity in our project teams to come up with the ideas. Then we use innovation to move these ideas from vision to reality.

Enabling Creative Thinking

Project management often provides the ideal environment in which to harness innovation. It requires project managers’ skills sets to include the ability and know-how to encourage and develop creative thinking to achieve results within the parameters set by the project. It’s about developing the ability to marry the traditionally structured, output-driven project management approach with “out-of-the-box thinking.

Innovation is a collaborative process; where people in many fields contribute to the implementation of new ideas. This occurs throughout the execution of a project.

Method and Practice

This means learning, practising and honing innovation skills including what the various methods are and how they are applied in different contexts, as well as measuring the methods and their results, determining what works and what doesn’t.

Creative Project Management

According to Business Improvement Architects (bia.ca) creative Project Management requires that the Project Manager will create a project team. This will begin the process of engagement and commitment. The team will collectively develop their team’s roles and responsibilities – so that everyone knows who’s involved in project success and what skills, knowledge and experience each of them adds to the overall team.

The project team will scope out the project to ensure there is a common understanding and agreement of scope. By engaging the entire team in the process it will be done faster, with more comprehension and complete team buy-in. The project team will then develop a detailed project plan. Research has shown that by creating the entire plan with the full team, teams will get a plan that has four (4) times the detail. And they will accomplish this in about one-quarter of the amount of time it takes compared to the project manager creating the plan on their own.

Project Management South Africa National Conference

In South Africa, the PMSA is hosting the National 2016 Conference with the Theme: “Harnessing the Power of Innovation”. The aim is to aid project managers in developing their own innovative skills which they can apply to their teams, as well as to intrinsically innovative projects that they have to manage.

The 2016 Conference Programme consist of keynote sessions, plenary sessions presented by experts and thought leaders, case studies, academic research presentations, master classes, an expo with interactive exhibits as well as plenty of networking opportunities.

Please subscribe to Virtual Project Consulting not to miss future articles!

October 6, 2016December 22, 2018 Linky

Project Basics – Cost Estimation and Budget Development

By Linky van der Merwe

During the Planning Phase of a project an important responsibility for a project manager is to plan cost management, to estimate costs and to determine the project budget. When I work with new project managers, budget development is an area where they need most help. This article aims to give standard practice guidance to project managers who have not done budgeting before.

Cost Management

Part of cost management is to establish the policies, procedures and documentation to be used for planning, managing, expending and controlling project costs. The PM needs to have the scope and schedule baseline and understand what financial controls the organization is using. The cost management plan is part of the project management plan and will describe how project costs are planned, structured and controlled.

Refer back to the article about the Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) as a planning tool. Once you’ve defined all the lower level tasks and you allocated resources to the tasks, you are ready to develop the project schedule and project budget.

Time estimate

Normally you will work on deriving the work effort estimates for each of the tasks using various techniques like bottom-up estimating, top-down estimating, phased estimating and so forth. Then the duration of the tasks is dependent on factors like the assumptions made, availability of resources (are they full-time or shared between project and operational work), risks and historically how long the tasks would typically take to complete.

Cost estimates

Next you can estimate costs after you assigned your resources. There are different types of resources that will make up the costs of the projects. They include direct costs:

Labour (People)
Consultant fees
Equipment or hardware
Software licenses
Expenses like travel
Training, team building

Then there are indirect costs including:

Facilities
Materials
Overhead costs such as rent and phone bills

To estimate the labour costs you should know the resources and the cost of the resources. The non-labour expenses include all costs not directly related to salary and contractor costs.

Supporting data

It’s important to document supporting data for all the cost estimates. This includes a description of the scope of the work for which cost estimates were calculated. You need to describe how the estimates were calculated for each work package. Mention the techniques used to estimate the costs, for example expert judgement, if reference was made to any historical data to make the cost estimates and vendor/supplier proposals. Document all of the assumptions made when creating the estimates.

Contingency reserve

A contingency reserve or buffer is added to projects (usually a percentage of the total project cost and time) to cover risk. This fund is used when encountering unexpected events during the project. You should adjust your contingency reserve to the risk level identified for the project. If there are many risks or unknowns, the contingency fund will be higher.

Monitoring the budget

Once the budget is determined your project has a cost baseline. The PM is responsible to monitor and control the project costs by regularly checking actual spending against budget estimates by using a spreadsheet. This will tell you whether the project is progressing as planned or if corrective action is needed.

Calculations/budget tracking

There are various calculations that need to be made through-out project execution. A sample of a Budget sheet can be seen below. To the left are the task descriptions, as per the WBS. Then you see a break-down of the budget and actual hours, then to the right is the break-down of the budget and actual costs. Using these numbers, calculations are made, including:

Estimate at completion (EAC)
Budget at completion (BAC)
Variance at completion (VAC)

Source: Cioarchives.ca.gov

Budgeting is a team effort and cannot be done in isolation. It’s important to obtain buy-in on the budget from the people who will actually perform the work. This participation gives people a stake in the success of the project and fosters accountability.

A project manager needs to monitor the budget and manage the expenses in order to finish the project under budget. This will reflect well on your ability to create an accurate budget and stick to it. Therefore, it’s important to review it often and make sure that you stay on track.

Please subscribe to Virtual Project Consulting not to miss future articles!

September 21, 2016 Linky

Project Story: Sensitivity around change

By Linky van der Merwe

This story is about a Medical Scheme Migration Project with the goal of having to migrate company staff from one medical scheme to another within six months. The project manager, Cathy Rodrigues, was working with a 3^rd party admin organization in the medical industry dealing with medical schemes. They were experienced external consultants who helped to make a strong, dynamic project team to enable a smooth migration.

It was mandatory for the affected staff to migrate onto the new scheme. The fact that there was a cost difference between the two medical schemes and that the scheme they migrated onto was more expensive, complicated the migration especially due to the staff resisting the migration. The project also involved a large stakeholder audience of 1472 people.

Resistance

The project required a huge change management intervention, yet there was no change manager assigned and it became the responsibility of the project manager to facilitate the change.

Due to the sensitive nature of the project, people having to leave a medical scheme that they’ve been on for years, to go to a different and more expensive one, and medical aid being a very personal matter, a petition was started against the migration. It was mitigated by giving staff a month’s grace. During the month’s grace Exco gave staff an ultimatum: they could get quotes from other schemes, and if it was cheaper they didn’t have to migrate to the new scheme, if it was more or the equal to, it was company policy to follow through with the original plan to migrate. A month had to be added to the project timeline to allow for this grace period.

Extensive information sharing

Much information had to be shared about the new medical scheme and group awareness sessions were arranged for this purpose. However, attendance of group awareness sessions was poor. In addition, provision was made for staff to have individual sessions with a consultant, but many were not attending the one on one sessions. Some of the managers would not allow all call centre agents to attend one on one sessions. Or people would leave it to the last minute.

Later the project team discovered that staff actually experienced IT difficulties in booking seats for the sessions through a booking system that was setup which caused some of the appointments to be double booked.

When disgruntled staff members complained to their direct managers, they would contact the project team, which again flooded their mailboxes. in some cases, line managers also weren’t aware of the awareness sessions and kept staff members from attending.

Migration successful

Despite all the resistance and initial setbacks caused by technology and the logistics of having to assist a large number of people personally with migrating to a new medical scheme, the project was delivered successfully. Only one month’s delay was experienced, with no scope creep because all staff members were migrated onto the new scheme.

The project team was a very diplomatic “no nonsense” team who worked well together.

Lessons Learnt

It is recommended to adopt a top down approach – engage with HR, Exco and line management before engaging with staff. Projects like this have to be handled with extreme sensitivity, people could be getting a worse deal than they had before. The petition that caught the project team by total surprise is an indication that it wasn’t addressed and handled correctly.

Change Manager is essential

On projects with a large stakeholder audience and of a sensitive nature, having a change manager onboard from the beginning, is essential. A project manager needs to focus on execution of the plan, achieving deliverables and reaching milestones. Most project managers are not equipped with the required change management skills and experience to compile a separate change intervention that could address stakeholder’s fears and concerns using words that would speak to their hearts. A change manager would be able to focus on the human side and take care of multiple communication strategies required for awareness, information, training and acceptance.

If no budget provision was made for a change manager, the project manager should motivate and even insist on bringing a change manager on-board to ensure a smoother transition and to take care of the human factor of change on this scale. For a professional project manager it would be the right thing to do to negotiate funding with the sponsor, because your reputation is also at stake.

Stakeholder engagement

It’s very important to have project kick-off sessions with the line- and top managers of the company explaining the project scope, timeline and change plan due to the sensitive nature of the change. They could then be empowered to assist as change agents to the staff members who approached them with their objections and complaints.

The communications need to be positioned well, not as was the case of the team who flooded inboxes with impersonalised messages promoting the medical scheme which probably from the start didn’t position the scheme very well. They also didn’t have any banners or visual posters to promote the scheme.

Technology

Although technology is there to help us on projects, it can cause havoc, like the double-bookings that were experienced. Always have backup plans in place and if the worst happens, then put workarounds in place to limit the impact of the issues.

Without sufficient and formal change interventions taking care of all the communication requirements with a large audience, using email makes it very difficult to track and measure effectiveness of dealing with people’s experience of the change.

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Cathy Rodrigues started out as a Project Administrator. Then she moved to a leading international bank and transitioned into a Junior Project Manager and eventually became a Senior Professional Project Manager. Her passion for being a PM remains unchanged, with her overall objective to manage tangible, soul satisfying projects that result in a positive outcome for all end users and stakeholders.

Cathy may be contacted on Cathmvdk@gmail.com or 083-6298389

September 8, 2016 Linky

Book Review: Project Management for SME’s

By Linky van der Merwe

A Book for SME’s

What you’d expect from a book that is written with small businesses in mind, is very practical advice and insight with regards to the application of project management as a discipline in the Small Business sector. The author, Gren Gale, is stating that a badly run project can significantly impact a business’s bottom line, in the case of a small business, this can be fatal. He also believes that a professional approach to project management will give a small business a competitive advantage over its rivals.

The aim of the book is described as a guideline for how to control and manage projects effectively. It is meant to support staff of small to medium-sized companies who are charged with coordinating one or multiple projects. It concentrates on projects where the spend isn’t massive, but the stakes are high.

The book is divided in 5 chapters and in chapter 2 it covers all aspects of project delivery from the Business Case, to analysis, design, build, test, implement and closure. Chapter 3 goes a bit deeper into project governance in terms of covering governance, risk and issue management, change control, quality and portfolio management.

Chapter 4 covers important soft skills that Gren believes are required for managing projects in small businesses, namely communication skills, people management and crisis management skills. In addition, Gren explains the Agile approach thoroughly and also how it is different from the well-known Agile methodologies.

Project Management experience

The in-depth knowledge and experience of Gren Gale comes through in the clear language and well defined concepts. I believe it is a good source of information for your typical small business managers who are also responsible for project execution. It provides a glossary and a set of required documents at the end, with the option of procuring templates at a discount.

After reading the book, the reader will know how to do projects the right way and which pitfalls to avoid. It can also convince the reader that proper training is required to do project management effectively and that it should not be done using ad hoc ways without the discipline of a consistent methodology.

Conclusion

My initial impression was that the process around project management should be simplified, and that the details in the book can leave a person feeling overwhelmed and perhaps not up to the task of managing projects without proper training.

Regardless, I can recommend the book to managers in small to medium-sized companies who are responsible for running projects. If they follow the principles, process and advice laid out, they will have a much better chance of being successful with project delivery and giving their businesses the competitive edge that well implemented strategies can bring.

To get your copy of the book, please visit Project Management for SME’s.

July 30, 2016February 14, 2022 Linky

Project Manager Skills – Decision Making

By Linky van der Merwe

Recently I had to make a very big decision that would influence my life for years to come. I realised just how hard it is to make sure that the best decision is made and that one can have peace of mind after you have made the decision.

Since effective decision making is one of the many soft skills a project manager needs on a daily basis, I think it’s worth sharing some good practices and tips.

Guidelines

According to the Project Management Book of Knowledge (PMBOK), effective decision making involves the ability to negotiate and influence the organisation and the project management team. Some guidelines for decision making include:

focus on the goals to be served
follow a decision-making process
study the environmental factors
analyse available information
stimulate team creativity
manage the risk

Styles for Decision Making

Let’s have a look at basic decision styles used by project managers.

Command is a more autocratic style that may be fit in many circumstances, but not so much in the project context, unless it’s a matter of safety.

Consultation — Confer with the team members

It’s a good idea to consult with the team members while following a proper decision making process that will probably lead to the best outcome.

By the end of the decision making process, you would want consensus among team members and for people to agree that the best possible decision has been made.

In any situation there are four major factors that will affect the decision style you use:

Time constraints
Trust
Quality
Acceptance

Model for decision making

Next you will find a good decision making model or process to use with your project teams.

#1 Problem definition

When you are faced with having to make an important decision, it’s very important to fully explore, clarify and define the problem. Look at it from all angles, not just from your own viewpoint.

#2 Problem solution generation

Now comes the part where you brainstorm multiple solutions, not making a premature decision.

#3 Ideas to action

You need to define evaluation criteria. Then you rate the advantages and disadvantages (pros and cons) of the alternatives in order to select the best solution. There are many tools available to assist you with this.

#4 Solution action planning

After the decision has been made, it’s recommended to perform a post-implementation analysis, to evaluate the decisions made and to acknowledge the lessons that you learned.

#5 Evaluate the outcome

The last step in the process is to evaluate how well the problem was solved or project goals were achieved.

I trust the next time you need to make decisions on your projects, you will have a process to follow that will allow you time to look at alternatives, to evaluate and score them and ultimately to make the best decision under the circumstances.

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For more hard and soft skills training, check out my Growth Program for new Project Managers!

It will help you grow critical project management competencies, learn how to overcome your biggest challenges on projects and increase your confidence.

July 5, 2016March 25, 2018 Linky

Book Review: The Conscious Project Leader

By Linky van der Merwe

When I was contacted by Colin Ellis to do a review of his new book: “The Conscious Project Leader”, I was curious to find out what new can be said about this well covered topic? I was pleasantly surprised!

Colin has a fresh perspective on project management, resulting in a book that you cannot put down once you start reading it. His wisdom comes from two decades of experience (in the coal face, as he calls it) and from doing projects on three different continents, Britain, New Zealand and Australia. Colin is also a speaker, writer and mentor on Conscious Project Leadership. One of his outstanding qualities, seems to be his sense of humour.

Leadership and Culture

The book is written from the perspective of how to create a culture of success for your projects, your team and yourself. Although leadership is covered in detail, much focus is also given to culture; like hiring, having a vision, collaboration, stakeholder satisfaction and celebrating success.

He covers just enough technical project management to make the book complete and without any unnecessary jargon that may confuse a reader. It is written in an informal style that is very engaging.

The chapters are short and to the point. There are numerous references to other books to read, videos to watch and actions to take, putting the reader on a journey of self-discovery and development towards becoming a conscious leader.

Lift Project Performance

What I compassionately agree with Colin, is that projects can change the world and that it’s frustrating that a big percentage of projects continue to fail. This book is his contribution to improve project success by helping professionals to be great project leaders and to give them the knowledge to be consistently successful. Another point we agree on is that we believe project success stories make the best lessons to learn.

Colin argues that projects are about people and that perhaps too much emphasis is placed on methods and processes and not enough on developing leaders who are responsible and accountable for project delivery.

Although I don’t disagree with that, I believe that developing leadership skills is equally important to having the right foundation of using methods and processes consistently. Training approaches should put equal weighting on both hard, as well as soft skills.

Conscious Leadership

Once you finish reading, Colin reminds you that this is just the beginning of your journey towards Conscious Project Leadership and that you have a big responsibility to apply your knowledge and to create the culture that will contribute to success. He challenges his fellow project practitioners to help make our profession proud.

Recommendation

Compared to other Project Leadership books that I have reviewed before, like “Leadership Toolbox for Project Managers by Michel Dion and The Power of Project Leadership by Susanne Madsen, I think this book complements what is already written.

It is modern in the sense that you can read it on a mobile device and visit the links at the end of chapters immediately. Colin has also prepared relevant quotes that he encourages the reader to share with their social networks using #CPL. It may start a movement under professionals who are committed to change.

I can recommend this book to all project practitioners, PMO managers/directors and people who have the opportunity to coach and mentor new and inexperienced project leaders.

You will find this book on Amazon and on Colin’s website, The Conscious Project Leader.

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June 22, 2016November 24, 2016 Linky

Project Management: Top 10 Tips for Validating your Project Schedule

By Linky van der Merwe

schedule WBS validation — Link to Schedule Validation Template

This article is aimed at existing project managers who use a scheduling tool like MS Project, or similar to plan their projects and then to execute against the plan.

Use the validation template once the Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) is transferred to a scheduling tool. The purpose is to validate that the project schedule contains all the necessary WBS elements to complete a project successfully.

#1 Deliverables

Are the key deliverables shown at the highest level of the WBS? If you do all of the detail tasks, will you have completely accomplished the summary deliverable?

#2 Scope and breakdown

Does the WBS represent the entire scope of the project and is it set at the appropriate level for the size and type of project?

#3 Milestones

Are there enough milestones identified and checkpoints when moving from one phase to the next?

#4 Governance

Are governance tasks separated out into their own section? Is there sufficient project management time across entire project?

#5 Structure

Does the WBS map to a methodology and does it make sense within that context?

#6 Estimates

Did the person who is most familiar with the task estimate the task itself? Check the accuracy of the task after the work had been performed.

#7 Risk

Did you document any risks for the tasks?

#8 Dependencies

Are the task dependencies implemented with the correct logic? Does the overall sequence of phases/deliverables make sense?

#9 Resources

Have all the resources been identified in the resource sheet? Is there any duplication of resources? Are all resources named completely and consistently using a naming convention?

#10 Tasks, assignments, durations

Are there any assignments on summary tasks? Does each detail task have at least one human resource assigned?

Final validation

It is always a good practice to have your schedule reviewed by an independent party or a senior architect not part of the planning team.

Please click here for the validation template that supports the schedule validation steps.

May 31, 2016February 14, 2022 Linky

Project Lessons Learned, but knowledge lost

By Linky van der Merwe

Recently I gave a talk at the PMO Forum (Western Cape, South Africa) making a case for Lessons Learned, the challenge we still have around retaining the knowledge and experience, how the PMO can promote learning and act as a knowledge broker, as well as examples of a story-based approach to lessons learned.

The purpose of this article to share plenty of insights based on some interesting discussions.

Knowledge Management

Often people, especially project managers, don’t want to learn from other people, they prefer to learn from their own hard-earned experience.

Some project managers don’t like to share things, it may show if they have messed up; this is true if they are achievement focussed. However, in a culture that supports people being open and honest, it creates the environment for a culture of learning. Organisations need to create an environment that is safe to share.

In many cases, there is too much emphasis on systems and codifying the knowledge. PMOs are well positioned to act as Knowledge Brokers within their organisations. PMO’s should play a bigger role to put a focus on processes and organisational learning.

When we talk about tacit knowledge, it’s more about the transfer of knowledge from project manager to project manager, with the PMO being the facilitator to allow sharing naturally.

For organisational learning to take place, health checks are good mechanisms to use the learning from various projects across different sponsors. Sponsors need to ask the hard question: “What does organisations do about learning from key projects?”

Another good idea for sharing lessons learned, came from the ‘pmoflashmob.org’ website. It is called the “Call 3” pack. Before you can get a new project approved, you must have a 30-minute phone call or meeting with each of three people identified by the PMO for having done similar projects in the past. They may not be project managers, but they will have war stories to share.

In case the project managers are not available a year or two after projects have been completed, you can also request PM’s to create a “call 3 pack” at the end of a project. They need to think about and imagine it is a year down the line and they are sharing with a new PM starting a similar project. What would they say? What advice would they impart? This is perhaps a better approach to keep the emotion and passion intact, rather than documenting it all in a sanitised or filtered report.

Audience feedback

Based on feedback from the PMO representatives in the audience, it was evident that less than 25% of organisations have a formal process in place for transferring project management knowledge from one part of the organisation to the next. Interestingly enough, more than 50% of attendees indicated that their organisations use lessons learnt from past projects during the induction of new project managers or get them to look at lessons from similar projects in the past.

It was found that the top 3 contributors to their organisation’s success/failure to effective knowledge transfer were:

Lack of communication
The right level of story-telling
A blaming corporate culture

Key insights

Feedback from the audience indicated that some of the key insights from attendees included:

Sharing is essential
The importance of knowledge sharing
PM’s not willing to share and learn
Peer Reviews
At start of a project confirming my own “feeling” about lessons learnt
How to change is dependent on organisation & people within.
The essence of project to organisation learning
Interview/story telling approach to lessons learnt
Learning for the PM, the PMO and the organisation
How to share lessons learnt
Story based lessons

To read more case studies on Lessons Learnt, read Success Stories Shared.

April 20, 2016August 25, 2022 Linky

Agile? 3 Benefits of Managing your Projects with Eylean Board

By Dovile Miseviciute

Within the fast paced world we live in today, staying on top of things is one of the most important and most difficult goals we give ourselves. Whether it is in our personal or our professional lives, we often find it challenging to keep up with the latest information, understand the whole picture and to make the right decisions fast. The good news is – we have tools like Eylean Board, to help us stay on track and see our projects to completion with ease.

Like many other great products, the story of Eylean Board starts with a small group of people struggling to find a tool that would fit their needs and like many others before them, deciding to create one of their own. Five years later, the small group of people is known as the team of Eylean, the tool is called Eylean Board and it is used by teams all over the globe.

You may wonder what is it that makes Eylean Board so great? Amongst multiple layers of projects, tasks and subtasks, time tracking, reports and integrations, there are three key benefits that put this software on top.

#1 Visual boards to represent every important detail

One of the most important things in project management is being able to see both the big picture and the important small details. However, analyzing the details takes time and thus we are left to rely on our team to give us the information. Needless to say, many things get lost in translation this way and we end up struggling to make the right decisions.

With Eylean Board however, the important small details are right there in the big picture. You can see who is working on which tasks, how much time they have taken, what problems they are facing and monitor the due dates represented in color-coded notifications on the board. And if you want to know more – simply expand the task details to see descriptions, commentary, attachments and more.

#2 A tool that is easy to use

Being able to understand and use the software immediately is another big problem companies are facing today. Introducing a new tool to your team usually means hours of training, followed by weeks of confusion and the wait for actual results that may never come.

The beauty of Eylean Board is that the whole user interface is based on intuition. Tasks can be moved, assigned and tracked all with a simple drag and drop. The software is self-explanatory and the ability to modify the board gives you an opportunity to duplicate your previous solution in order to have a smooth transition period for all. Contrary to some other tools, Eylean Board can be used by developers, sales, marketing, finance and any other department in a company at the same time.

#3 Latest project management methods at your fingertips

Lastly, you need an innovative tool to keep up with project management practices that are moving forward. Eylean Boards is just that – you will find templates for Scrum, Kanban and Scrumban boards or will be able to create your own templates modifying and improving the Agile methods to be just right for you. Furthermore, the Eylean team is fully emerged in following the latest Agile trends and can help guide your Agile journey.

Eylean Board is an intuitive and easy to use project management software that allows your team to realize their potential.

About the author: Dovile is the marketing manager at Eylean. She has been actively immersed in the Agile project management field for two years by working within the methodology and writing articles about the newest trends and shifts in the industry.

February 15, 2016July 24, 2023 Linky

Challenges faced by new Project Managers and how to overcome them

By Liz Dewing

Looking back at being a “new” Project Manager (about 27 years ago!!), what I’m most conscious of, is that back then there was very little available to me in the way of established wisdom about how to BE a Project Manager. It was something I needed to work out as I went along.

In some respects that was useful: it certainly meant I learned an awful lot the hard way – by getting it wrong – and believe me, that kind of learning sticks!! On the other hand, it was a very inefficient way of operating because it took me longer than necessary to acquire a well-rounded toolkit.

Guides and Best Practices

Nowadays we are almost at the opposite extreme – where there is very little opportunity for the school of hard knocks, and almost every aspect has an associated operating manual or set of best practices. The challenge now is to filter, out of the plethora of guides and documented frameworks, that which is most relevant to your situation.

The reality is that having too much at your disposal is almost as bad as having too little!

One of the worst mistakes a new Project Manager can make in my opinion is to fall in love with theory and to try to impose the “ideal model” on real world projects without the filter of pragmatism and context. There is nothing guaranteed to create frustration and animosity between PM and Stakeholders faster than a situation where the PM is trying to impose an inappropriate level of control or making excessive demands for governance.

Governance

If there is no Project Office in place, providing a rational set of guidelines about governance relative to the project, then the next best way to tackle this as a new PM, is to make sure that you take the time to sit down with your Sponsor / Key Stakeholders. You need to negotiate and agree on the project approach, including which processes will be applied to what level of detail, and what management documentation is to be produced. Raise your concerns and express your wishes – but let them determine the level of governance that they believe is best suited to what is, after all, their delivery.

I have found that creating a Sign-off Matrix (click for sample) which details who will be required to approve what artefact or deliverable, in what capacity, is a really useful way of sensitizing people to what is coming, helping them ensure that they:

Understand the process to create artefacts
Make time for the necessary reading and reviews
Understand what their signature actually means when they are asked to approve something (i.e. correctness of content / correctness of process / ownership etc.

I also find that getting the main decisions forums established quickly, with clarity about mandate, frequency and agenda, really helps a new PM because it creates an “advisory panel” that is intrinsically balanced by the presence of both high-control stakeholders and those who are comfortable with higher levels of risk. Taking governance decisions to these panels can help a new PM navigate and acquire an understanding as to the organisation’s culture and appetite for controls.

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About the Author: Liz Dewing has an extensive career in IT, Project and Project Office Management with various organisations, including 13 years with Old Mutual South Africa. After 8 years running a Strategy Delivery Project Office, Liz left to focus on Magnetic North – a Consultancy through which she helps people to use their powers of speech more effectively in business and career.